Date: Sun, 7 Jan 1996 16:45:27 CST
From: Luanne von Schneidemesser
Subject: Re: budge
In Message Sun, 7 Jan 1996 10:30:00 CST, Tom Murray writes:
>
>3. I always thought *budge* was a negative-bias word, so that sentences like "T
>he old man in the rocking chair hasn't budged all day" were grammatical while s
>entences like "The old man in the rocking chair budged all day" weren't. But r
>ecently the Head of my department wrote the sentence "We may have to budge on t
>hat one" in describing a particularly ticklish political situation. Does "We m
>ay have to budge on that one" sound as marginal to anyone else as it does to me
>? Is *budge* really not a negative-bias word?
My children started saying, in a different sense but used positively, "He
budged!" when they started school, for 'he cut in, he cut in line in front
of me'. At first I tried to correct them since this wasn't in my
vocabulary, but I soon realized that all the kids in their school (now
expanded to three different schools) use this in Madison.
Luanne
Luanne von Schneidemesser, (608) 263-2748
DARE, 6129 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park, Madison, WI 53706
lvonschn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]facstaff.wisc.edu